Monday, May 4, 2009

Feeling the Feijoas



There is a lot of excitement around here this week. We have started to pick our first saleable crop of feijoas. It is three years since we planted this orchard in terraces, on a hillside just next to our house, and each day for the next five weeks or so, I am going to be walking along these terraces gently feeling the fruit to see if they will plop into my cupped hand.

I love walking along, having a little feel and smelling the fragrance of these delicious fruit. These friendly feijoas have grown on me rather a lot. When we had two ancient feijoa trees in our home orchard, I wasn't that keen on them and wouldn't go into raptures like the rest of my family, but now that we have a young orchard with lots of different varieties, I am learning to discern the differences and am enjoying the subtle flavours and the names of these green beauties....opal star, kaiteri, kakariki, wiki tu, kakapo, triumph and unique.


We put these nets under one row of trees, to see if we can catch the fruit before it falls. If it falls to the ground before we can gently pluck them from the tree then the fruit is only good for juicing, and here.....
are the first five crates of Feijoas ready for the market.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so interesting! I have never heard of them! What do they taste like and how are they used? I wonder if we have them in our produce department; I will have a look!

Little Miss Flossy said...

How wonderful! We love feijoas but only ever seem to get the small, wrinkly ones in supermarkets here. I have a couple of recipes for feijoa cakes and I make them as often as I can.

melissa said...

ooh- yum!
it's great to see the fruits of your hard labour (sorry about the pun.)
i didn't realise the different types had such cool names. kakapo feijoas!

walter and me said...

I've never even heard of feijoas! What do they taste like? You learn so many things in blogland....! How exciting to be able to sell a crop, too.
xxx

speckled egg said...

YUM!

Little Miss Flossy said...

$10 a kilo for some particularly wizened specimens in Countdown today. You are so lucky!

kate said...

If there's one thing I miss about NZ, it's certainly the fejoas... mmmmmm... enjoyxxx

Unknown said...

Hi,
I live in Spain and I love Feijoas. I have two plants in my yard and I would like to know where I could buy the Wiki Tu and Apollo varieties.
I know it's going to be very expensive to ship those plants to my country, but any other hobbies are expensive too.
If anybody know something about that, please let me know at manuel.conde.porteiro@gmail.com